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Breaking and making 12 habits over 12 months sounds like a whole lot of hard work and it is, believe me, I’m doing it! But it doesn’t have to be all bad…

I want to share with you a trick of the trade that not only helps me get through it with a rosey sunshine disposition but also helps me stay on track, even though I rail road more often that I’d like to admit.

That’s right you heard it here first I ate my body weight in sugar for the month after I quit for the month. Don’t judge me, you’re not perfect! I’m back on track now for your information… sort of… it’s a work in progress… I have progress, that’s the main thing!

The saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. One of the things I plan is my attitude, it’s a freaking huge factor!

Prior to each challenge I sit down and write down all the things that will be good about me making or breaking the next habit and I get abnormally and almost weirdly excited about it. How cool is turning down an ice-cream or not having social media or making several different good habit all at once! Freaking farting fairy dust I’m so excited, that’s how good it is!!!

Or this is what I tell myself anyway and I hard core concentrate on it.

You see it’s all in your head, the power to everything, I won’t get too woo woo on you but it’s true!

If I went into this month where I’m tracking everything I do in a day thinking – OMG this is going to be so hard, what a drag, FML – It’s pretty likely that not only would I be miserable but feel far less likely to accomplish what I’ve set out to accomplish.

Every single thing we do has a down side if you look for it. Some of us habitually think that way. That’s right our thinking believe it or not is a habit.

We all know them, those people who always seem to have something to complain about? It’s because they habitually have a negative mindset. We also know the opposite, people who always seem happy and appreciative of every little thing? They have a positive mindset. Our minds actually habitually make these thought patterns.

Anyway that’s a bit off topic yet on a side note it relates to my next month’s habit. I’m breaking complaining! I struggle with a positive mindset so I want to focus on making this shift. More of that later.

Back to the point. You can change anything you want in your life! The truth is most of the time it’s going to be hard so don’t make it harder on yourself by having a bad attitude. Shift the way you think about things.

Nervous about an interview? Concentrate on how excited you are for the opportunity to take the interview! Dreading quitting smoking? Write down every positive reason you’re giving up and put it on your fridge! Don’t want to clean your house every week like you promised yourself you would? Think about that clean house smell and how worth it it’s going to be.

11pm, you’re staring at the ceiling with elated excitement over the 50 epiphanies you’ve had over that past hour.

You’re going to get up in the morning and freaking rock life! Nail it in fact! Make it your mother f-ing bitch!

you’re going to make your relationships with your loved ones amazing and set your entire life up for success!

You’re going to get up drink a smoothie, run a million miles and never eat chocolate again.

You’re going to study hard and make a million trillion dollars in some amazing business idea you came up with 10 minutes ago, why? Because YOU’RE A FREAKING GENIUS, RIGHT!

Life come at me!!!!!! POW!

Fast forward a week.

Too hard, fell off the band wagon, woo me, now I’m going to start the never ending spiral of negative self-talk and wallow in the fact that I’m a failure and life sucks and things will never work out for me. Best get used to the mediocre life…. I’ll be living it forever….

Fast forward 6 months later, we get sick of mediocre, lay in bed at 11pm, get elated with excitement over the same 50 epiphanies we had 6 months ago annnnnnd the cycle starts again.

Now I could take this example and run in 1000 different directions as to why we do the above and how to fix it. Today, however, I want to talk about how the little habits that are CONSITANTLY done, build other habits and snowball into awesomness. Awesomness is way better than self-loathing every day of the week, so listen up!

So now, having read that, you can understand that “Basil” (part of our brain called the Basal Ganglia) is going to freak the frig out if you go diving in and change every single thing all at once. He will make life hard for you thus why we give up our 50 epiphanies within a week. So you need to make life easy for him.

Now, before I go any further I’m just going to put an astrix in here and say – * I won’t say don’t dive in all at once. If you are capable of over turning your entire life overnight, ALL power to you gurl!

For those, however, who go through or have gone through the above cycle like myself I suggest taking one step at a time. It will have a roll on effect.

So say for example you want to get fit and healthy….

Start with eating better. Come home still sit on the lounge, don’t yoga, don’t get up for an early morning jog, go to bed late, just eat better – Simple. Basil’s a little confused but he’s ok, Courtney will calm him down with your help.

You can go even smaller. Still have a burger for lunch and deep fried mars bar for dinner, swap out your coco pops for a smoothy every morning, the next week ditch the burger for a wrap, the next week switch the deep fried mars bar for a healthy stir fry.

If you Fall off the band wagon, start again…. IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN! Big whoop!

Here’s a spoiler…

IT’S OK TO NOT BE PERFECT! Sorry to burst your bubble! Do your best that’s all that can be expected of you!

Just DON’T GIVE UP! Don’t let Monday roll around before you start again, every day is Monday the only difference is that Wednesday day is called “Monday” it’s just a label! Shock horror I know! Monday isn’t a day all to itself and then we have tueswednesthursfrisatsunday, each day is a new day, each day is a new day, each day is a new day! Don’t (excuse the language) wait for fucking Monday!!!

I’ll get off my soap box now. Thank you, Thank you very much!

Habits somehow – there might be science behind this there might not be – attract more habits similar to it. Your habits will align to support each other. Firstly here’s how bad habits support each other…

Right now you may be eating none nutritious foods that don’t fuel your energy, if you’re low on energy chances are you won’t feel like exercising, if you’re not exercising and on a high from a sugary after dinner snack, chances are that you’re going to get a shit sleep, wake up tired, eat food that’s going to keep you tired and not exercise because you’re tired.

Now I’m going to become self-absorbed here and explain to you how the habits I’m creating through my habit tracker support themselves.

I’m making an effort to eat little sugar and eat right, Tick, I therefore have energy to exercise, tick. I read before bed instead of getting on social media, tick, I turn my light out at 10pm, tick. The Next morning, I’m well rested because I did all of the later, I now have the energy to get up at 6:15am, tick, I do yoga, Tick, I feel good and want to feel even better so I drink my lemon water, tick, I eat the right breakfast to sustain me for the day and so the habits roll around and around and around.

Make no mistake, it has taken 2 years for me to get all of these in line to the extent that I have today, I am the slowest person in the world when it comes to self-discipline but I’m working on it, one habit at a time. Now I have momentum but when I first started to me I’d just started exercising but it’s snowballed from there. So don’t feel you have to do all of these all at once, take your time, just keep going.

What I want you to take from this is seeing how when you set one thing on track it rolls into several others? These are called keystone habits. Go to bed earlier, get up earlier make that your habit and see the roll on effects.

What’s your keystone habit? Which one habit do you change? Write down all the habits that you want to make to achieve your goal, whatever that may be. Consider each habit which one will have the biggest roll on effect to the others? Pick that one and do it, EVERY SINGLE DAY!

So, moral to the story, don’t be afraid to make or break just one habit, it will grow, I promise and Basil will be none the wiser. *wink*

So, make it and break it-ers, in six months’ time will you be just a little closer to achieving your 50 epiphanies or will you be staring at your ceiling at 11pm having them again?

Well haven’t I indulged in the land of “F social media”, Sorry guys, I did promise blogs and instagram pics. I know, I know, I’m a shit blogger!

Meh, I’ve loved it!

I’ve felt like such a freaking rebel getting my bad ass on actually holding conversations and being in awkward situations without buffering my way out of them by looking at my phone. I have life skills bitches!!

So what’s happened over the past month? Let’s start with the not so great times first.

Day 2, I forfeited a netball game because in my head I didn’t think we would have enough numbers but actually our group chat said we had plenty. Oops! That was a one way ticket to pissing 7 women off! Sorry ladies!

Next, a quick apology to the 3 beautiful brides-to-be for whom I’m Bridesmaid for this year. Sorry you had to separately text me due to my non conformity with your BM group chats! Thanks for being awesome and texting your wayward BM x

Now, all sins confessed and the shitty parts of not having social media done and dusted, let’s get to the good stuff!

The first point I’d like to make shocked me – But it was my favourite part. I came to realise how disconnected I had become from having actual connections with people in my life. I’d figured I was doing a good job half-heartedly taking part in my loved ones lives every day through social media. The past month I have felt more engaged and apart of my friends and families lives than I ever did before. I’ve learnt to not underestimate the importance of phone calls, texts to an individual, being fully engaged in conversations, hearing what someone has done in their lives first hand and actually being there, right there, in the flesh for someone you love.

Mushy lovey dovey stuff out of the way….

…So much time for activities! I’ve been reading again, books, magazines, the back of the toilet spray. Remember the days when you could name every ingredient of the lavender spray in the bathroom! I’ve studied every week, half a unit to go and I’m a Life Coach, officially!!! HOW ECITING!! Yoga of a morning and actually going to bed to sleep at night. I like these things filling in my days, it brings me happiness, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram don’t.

I got to choose when I dealt with negativity and bullshit. You have no control over what people put in your life with social media, I didn’t realise how much it was actually infiltrating my moods and thoughts until they didn’t. I felt a level of calm just dealing with my own world and the world of those I invite into mine. I now almost have an anxiety attack at the thought of keeping up with 1224 worlds just in FB friends.

I don’t actually like social media, which was news to me! It’s just a habit, I didn’t miss it at all! I actually feel like I was cheating on my “break a habit mission”, it wasn’t hard like I thought it would be. Sure the first few days I was picking up my phone and putting it down realising that there was nothing on it for me but that was it. I have nothing to report in the way of tips for giving up social media, because it’s easy, you just have to do it.

Now the big question, make it or break it? Hmmmm… half half. When it comes to Facebook Messenger, life is actually easier and better with it, I wouldn’t be without it. I’m going to do a BIG clean up on the other platforms, kick some “friends” and unfollow pages. I love seeing photos of my besties babies and exciting moments in friends lives, that I’ve missed. Seeing a cat lick itself however I don’t feel brings much value to my life.

So that’s that…. Stay tuned for next month… I’m excited about this one, time to make a habit… or should I say habits!

I’m going to give you the report on my findings during this experiment in pro’s and con’s.

Let’s start with the bad news first and finish off on a high note with the good news.

Con’s:
1. The world sucks and you hate everything and everyone and you feel like a pre-pubescent teenager with a MASSIVE attitude problem for ATLEAST the first week!
Everything I read told me that I’d become an over tired devil spawn bitch from hell, so naturally I become very arrogant in the first few days proclaiming, “I feel fine”….well. well. well… only a few days later I managed to piss everyone I work with off, convince myself I had the worst life ever, cry my annual allowance of tears with in a week and I may have even… maybe…. possibly… punched the kitchen wall (side note 1: Our walls are double brick) (side note 2: I’ve not admitted this to anyone) (side note 3: don’t judge me!).

2. It’s bloody hard! Particularly when you step out of the house. It’s easy finding menus with GF pasted all over them but nothing with SF written on it.
– Going to the local show – Main ingredients of all Show related foods? Tomato sauce or white bread. Hard pass on both.
– ROOOOOOOOOOOAD TRIP! Bulk sugar in EVERYTHING! Fun fact though, did you know that KFC’s nutritional information chart is on their website? Interesting read, really!
– Lunch with the girls – The menu wasn’t my battle here, it was the “what are you going to eat Hayley? A lettus leaf?” taunts that made me what to snort the hot chocolate powder straight out of the canister on the coffee machine.
– Going to someone else’s house for dinner. Let me tell you a famous story amongst my family. We were always taught that if someone else cooked you a meal you were to be grateful for their efforts, sit down, shut up and eat it, FULL STOP. One time my brother, mother and I were cooked for and served smoked cod…. boiled!
Filth!
Regardless, my brother and I sat there and ate it like the grateful little angels we were. Later mum came in to the bathroom where her two children burst into tears and asked her never to make us eat that again. Mum was so proud of her polite offspring, yet having also eaten the culinary insult thankfully she never made us eat smoked cod boiled again. Moral to the story, there’s no bloody way I’m going to someone’s house and asking them to ensure there’s no sugar in any of the ingredients that they feed me. Second moral to the story, I enjoyed every last bite of what ever was dished up to me, sugar or no sugar and I’m not sorry.

3. I’m going to make this one quick for the sake of the fella’s who may read this. Going through that time, at that particular point in the month, sugar free, isn’t pleasant. I’ll let you ladies fill in your own version of hell here.

Now for the happy story….

Pro’s:

1. I now comfortably fit into a pair of jeans I have been carrying around for 7 years in hopes that this day would come. Let me first get something straight here, this challenge has never been about loosing weight. Holy moly though, it was a good feeling pulling those babies on without squirming around laying on my bed, putting my back out while pulling up the zipper up or doing “the twist” to get them over my thighs.

2. It’s amazing the habits I didn’t even realise I’d formed until I wasn’t allowed to do it. Habits like scouting a service station every time I filled up my car for what I might “like” as a “one off” treat, slipping down the sweet isle whilst at the supermarket, grabbing for something sweet after I’d eaten any meal, spoon full of honey in my tea, my love for condiments, nibbling etc. I did all these things out of mindless habit. It’s nice to feel in control of something you didn’t even know you had no control over.

3. It rubs off. I’ve had friends check in a food labels with me to check how much sugar is in something and engage in new recipes that are sugar free. Even my partner who is very much a blokes bloke when it comes to his food ran with the concept a few times. One night I went to put some pasta on for him whilst I spiralled Zucchini for myself, I was super surprised when he said “I’ll have the same as you”, I even caught him checking a food label before he served me something.

Now I’m sure pigs will fly before every one of my loved ones fully embrace a sugar free diet, none the less, it’s a nice feeling when you see a good change in your life have a positive influence on the people you love.

4. I know stuffs about stuffs. At first I was weighing and measuring every single ingredient in every single thing I ate. This lasted a week before I got jack of it. Yet what I found was, that week gave me enough knowledge to fairly well accurately judge how much sugar was in what I was eating. It became easy really. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way.

5. I sleep better, much better. My fit bit stats show me sleeping like a rock these days from the moment I put my head to the pillow. Before I was all over the shop with getting to sleep and staying asleep.

6. I don’t feel as sluggish. I’ve come to love that “eaten fresh feeling”. It’s so nice feeling light in the belly. I couldn’t say that this is completely owed to being sugar free as I don’t know that for sure. I think it would be fair to say that it’s coupled with that and not being able to eat heavy foods such as bread on the reg.

Now my final word, to I make it or break it?

I’m defiantly keeping these habits broken. I don’t think I’ll be a Nazi about it like I’ve been this last month but the pro’s defiantly weigh out the cons and I feel better than I have in a long time. I think it’s ok to bend when you have to or when you’ll really enjoy it. For the most part though I’ve kicked sugar and it’s staying that way.

Also, I ate a celebratory packet of Maltesers whilst writing this and I now have a head ache. It’s official, Sugar sucks!

So by now we know how much of a prick sugar is.
We know it’s making us fat.
We know it’s the cause of diseases.
We know it’s addictive.
We know it contributes mood swings and even depression.
We know we are eating far more than we are capable of digesting.
We know it hides in foods it has no business being in and;
We know the industry has corrupted the truth being told to us.

So here’s my list of reasons why I’ve waged war on sugar for the month.

– We now eat more sugar in 2 weeks that we ate in a year 200 years ago. Our increased consumption of sugar correlates directly to the increase in diabetes in cultures where sugar is introduced to the diet.

– It’s addictive! Don’t believe me? How are these apples…. A French scientist had 43 Heroine addicted lab rats that he fed sugar water to over a period of time. When given the choice of whether to have sugar water or heroine, 40 mice chose the sugar water. IT’S LITERALLY MORE ADICTIVE THAN HEROINE!

– Our metabolism & digestive system hasn’t change in 130,000 years and yet our diet has dramatically changed. Our bodies are not evolved to withstand the modern diet that is so sugar rich.

– STORY TIME: When we were kids we were only ever allowed to drink water (which I thank my mother for now!), of course in our minds mum was being completely unreasonable, our friends were allowed soft drink! At the time my little brother lost his last baby tooth we were at an age where we were too cool for the tooth fairy. Mum came up with a little experiment for this tooth. She put his tooth in a glass of coke and said in the morning we will strain it and you can see what the tooth looks like. The next morning we strained the tooth… there was no tooth, it had completely disintegrated. Sugar literally rots your teeth! YOU PUT THAT SAME SHIT IN YOUR BODY!

– Sugar is a dirty filthy little liar! My values and morals don’t align with anything remotely dishonest. I get very cranky to see sugar in things that should be healthy and nutritious such as oats, muslie bars, nuts, “diet” foods. It’s so wrong for food companies to pry on the naivety of the consumers and position their foods in a healthy light when in fact they are slowly killing people. Slowly killing people through misconception and misinformed propaganda – that’s legal??

– Sugar is seen as a major cause of diseases such as heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, liver disease obesity and the list goes on and on and on.

– Our recommended daily intake is 4 teaspoons for children, 6 teaspoons for women and 9 for men. Currently the average adult consumes 22 teaspoons and 34 teaspoons for children. That’s an issue!

– Sugar hides, EVERYWHERE! Added sugar is in more than 75% of the products in our supermarkets and goes by 200 different names! How the “F” are consumers meant to even recognise it? Sugar is sooooo sneaky!

– The reason why we don’t know any of this… at least 96 health organisations have been sponsored by big soda companies between 2011-2015. Health organisations aren’t going to be silly enough to bite a hand that feeds them.

The list goes on and on.

If you find an hour in your life to watch some Netflix watch “Fed Up”. I’m not ashamed to say that I sobbed part the way through it due to the aweful things that have gone on in our society to allow sugar to do what it has done to people.

Sugar contributes to depression, mood swings, disease, premature aging and so many other terrible things. We may feel a rush when we first intake sugar but long term misery is the only thing we have to look forward to. If you think about it, the same could be said about illicit drugs, so my question is sugar any better?

Let’s take a ride back in time to 2006, a time when I was a studious 16 year old…

…well in all subjects that weren’t science. I’d sit up the back, give the nod to a friend 4 seats away who’d start the clock, 30 seconds later, “HAYLEY…!” the clock would stop. New record! Great game! The game of how quickly can we tick our science teacher off, whom we will warmly refer to as Mr. H.

My classes would consist of counting how many time Mr. H. would say “ummm”. To be fair, if any of my fellow class mates would admit it, we all did.

If Mr. H. knew I was about to write a post for everyone to see about neuroscience he’d probably high five me…. across the face…. with a blackboard duster… attached to a hammer.

Lovely chap now that I think back from an adults point of view, recognising of course that teachers are people too. So Mr. H. this one is for you and may I offer my sincere apologies.

Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to two friends of mine that I think you should all get to know, The Basal Gangli and The Prefrontal Cortex. Given we are all friends here you can call our first friend Basil and the second Courtney.

Basil lives in the back of our brains, his job is to make our job as humans easy. When we repeatedly do something Basil says, “right you are sir, allow me to make that habitual”. Good Fellow Basil, if it wasn’t for him the simplest things such as brushing our teeth of a morning would be an onerous task.

Basil does soooooo much for us, for the purpose of this however there are three things about Basil that you should know.

Firstly, Basil LOVES comfort, I like to think of him as an old man stuck in his ways. That means that when we do something out of our comfort zone such as exercise, start our day at 6am and even think differently, Basil speaks up, “listen here Sonny, now that’s not safe, we don’t do that, it’s not easy. let me keep you safe. Sit back down on the lounge dear, here gorge yourself on this cake.” He’s the keeper of our habits and boy does he love keeping them!

The second thing you need to know about Basil is that he doesn’t actually know what’s good and bad for us. If you’ve done something over and over again he figures you’ve got your shit together enough to know right from wrong and he just makes it easy for you. I for one have Basil welllllllllll deceived.

Lastly, Basil works off triggers. It’s morning, let’s brush our teeth. We’ve finished dinner, let’s wash up. We are home from work, let’s sit on the lounge. I’m bored, let’s get on social media.

Now for our other new friend Courtney. Spritely Lass our Courtney. Courtney is responsible for our personalities and behaviours, she is our thoughts and she creates our reactions to our surroundings. Courtney is the chickie babe who DOES know right from wrong.

Courtney & Basil chat regularly. Courtney uses information from Basil to make our decisions, like wise when Courtney is doing her thing Basil takes note and creates what we know as a Neural pathway which, in short, creates our habits.

There are three components to habits the trigger, the reward, the routine. Let’s apply this to my months quest, quitting sugar. 3:30pm hits (the trigger), Basil takes me to the cookie jar (the reward) and do that everyday (routine). This is a habit, Basil likes this…

…But Basil needs to take a back seat while I shake things up.

Now understand, I haven’t got rid of the trigger, the reward or the routine, I’ve simply replaced something, that something being the reward – Courtney has helped me actively choose this everyday. I still get up at 3:30pm, I still walk to the kitchen but I make a cup of tea. Basil Knows something’s up, something’s different, it doesn’t feel quite right. He goes with the flow however because it’s sort of kind of what he’s used to so there isn’t much kick back. If I had of just dropped my 3:30pm routine all together Basil would have caused chaos.

It has become more and more comfortable making a cup of tea and ignoring the cookie jar because Courtney’s been talking to Basil, she’s been walking in a new Neural Pathway and everyday the pathway becomes more warn into my brain. Eventually the old cookie pathway will weaken and “over grow” and the new path will be the norm.

Now this takes between 30-60 days, thus why I’m making or breaking a different habit every 30 days.

So here are the lessons I want you to take from meeting these friends of mine;

Breaking or making habits is not easy! We are not made to conquer the world, we are made to survive, to survive all these years it’s how we have had to be made. To hunt, gather and stay alive. Now-a-days however it’s all to easy to do this and we no longer have a need to survive but to thrive – We have evolved faster than our brains have and they haven’t caught onto the new trend of being freaking AWESOME!

You need to nurture Basil, after all he does just want what’s best. When you are giving something up that he loves, give him something new. When you’re feeling frustrated at having to do something, know it’s just Basil doing what he thinks is best for you, sit with him, reassure him and love your new decisions so that he becomes comfortable with them.

Give it time, there needs to be time to make and break habits. Don’t give up!

Know what you have to change and when you’ll have to change it. Plan replacements for your bad habits.

Habits work by filing in three components, play with those components change one up to wear a new path. Get home from work (trigger), put your joggers on feel accomplished for just doing that instead of sitting on the lounge (reward) do it everyday (routine)! Hopefully you’d go for a run as an off spin of the accomplished feeling of putting your shoes on. If not fine, that’s just a shitty day, I can guarantee you you’ll be 10 times more likely to go for a run if you come home and habitually put your joggers on though. There are so many ways you can play with this and REMEMBER, you won’t get the change up right the first time everytime… dare I say it, PERSIST!

Now let me give you something to put all this in perspective. Presuming you live to say 85, that means you have 31,025 days in your life, 60 days is 0.9339242% of your life. Isn’t it worth taking that minute percentage of your days to steer your life in a better direction and make the remaining 99.0660758% of your life FREAKING AMAZING?

Now don’t get me wrong when I say I stuffed up, I promise I didn’t sit in a corner rocking back and forth smearing sweet treats over my naked, sugar crazed body.

I just happened to loose the dirty little hide and seek game that sugar plays!

I had 497km to drive, 4 clients to see and I was doing it on very little sleep – That’s a story for another day.

Determined to stick to my guns and show that “sweet-son-of -a-white-bitch” who’s boss, I walked into the service station on a hunt for something that wouldn’t have sugar in it. I was running behind on time so I grabbed a little 43g packet of fruit and nuts, paid for my fuel and ran out the door.

I opened the packet on my next 1 1/2 hour trip, took my first “nut” and popped it in my mouth concentrating on the road. What the! Nope, not a nut, white chocolate bite!

I won’t lie, it was delicious!

SHIT!! I picked the white chocolate out, throwing the pieces out the window because I would have eaten them otherwise and continued to chow down on the nuts.

Proud of my self for being the boss and tossing the choc, I checked the packet out. The whole thing was full of sugar!

For those punters at home who don’t know how nutritional information works, allow me to teach you a few things.

Hide & seek tactic # 1 – The ingredients on a packet are listed from the largest quantity to the least. Out of the 10 ingredients in my nut packet sugar was 3rd.

Hide & seek tactic # 2 – Serving size is usually not what you eat. This packet has serving size of 30g… The whole packet is 45g! Excuse me while I don’t eat an almond and a pistachio to coincide with you “serving size” pfft! Seriously? Food companies can put anything they like there.

Hide & seek tactic # 3 – I look at the sugar content per 100g = 40.4g. So I do my math… 40.4g of sugar per 100g = 0.40g of sugar per gram. Times 0.40g by the 45g in the packet = 18g of sugar.

Hide & seek tactic # 4 – 4g sugar = one teaspoon. That means there is 4.5 teaspoons of sugar in that one “healthy snack”!

So there you go, moral of the story, sugar doesn’t play nice in the sand pit! Not cool fruit & nut mix not cool!

From the beginning of this hair brained idea I knew one of the habits I needed to break was sugar.

– The habit of searching the cupboards after every meal, settling for licking the rim of a honey jar when your more responsible self went shopping and didn’t buy the truck load of chocolate you normally justify bringing home.

– The habit of becoming a zombie who walks from her office to the cookie jar several times a day.

– The habit of eating like a saint, exercising like a fitness fanatic and ruining it all with 10 scoops of milo and a sneaky spoon of sugar on top. “I deserve it, I exercised and ate cabbage today, besides how can you milo and not sugar?” I say to the angel on my left shoulder as she scours me for giving into her cheeky devilled counter part on my right shoulder.

Yep this is me…

There is a rumour I’ve heard from my family that as a child I once turned down a chocolate biscuit for a banana. Now I’m not sure who that Hayley is, but I don’t know her.

So here’s my challenge this month, I’m to eat only the recommended daily intake of sugar for a female for the next month starting Wednesday 10th May. What is the recommended daily intake you ask? 6 teaspoons! Sounds heaps right? Wrong! A banana is the equivalent of 3 teaspoons! A bloody banana! Those yellow healthy things your mother shoved in your face as an answer to “I’mmmmmmm Hunnnngrrrrrry!”

This is my biggest demon, this is the habit I’m scared of breaking – “I could leave it until the end, perhaps never do it, yep that’s what I’ll do, never do it. Actually bugger this make it and break it mission, I just won’t do it at all! I don’t need to break any habits, I’m already the best version of myself, my life’s perfect…. right?” – cue awkward chirping crickets.

On the contrary, there’s a part of me I like to refer to as Bad Ass Hayley and Bad Ass Hayley wants to show that son-of-a-sweet-white-bitch who’s boss and lead by example. So head first into my fear I go, laters Sugar! – cue raising of ones middle finger.